Gonna drop my 2 cents. What is the difference between skilled DIY guy and skilled engeineer? None, they can be the same person!
I know for a factm that a DIY solution can beat almost any commercial product. The possibility is there, but it's neither cheap nor fast. Lately I've been designing my own preamp, tailored to my own needs. Amount of time required to do it from scratch is huge. For the time being I'm building Douglas Self Preamp 2012 from Elektor to fill the need. My own project still requires too much time. From my own experience, you need to have (or rather you're going to develop) some essential skill like: electronics, machining, programming. That takes time and money to do. You can also use some ready built modules, that really shorten the time to build.
I know for a factm that a DIY solution can beat almost any commercial product. The possibility is there, but it's neither cheap nor fast. Lately I've been designing my own preamp, tailored to my own needs. Amount of time required to do it from scratch is huge. For the time being I'm building Douglas Self Preamp 2012 from Elektor to fill the need. My own project still requires too much time. From my own experience, you need to have (or rather you're going to develop) some essential skill like: electronics, machining, programming. That takes time and money to do. You can also use some ready built modules, that really shorten the time to build.
Audio electronics is uniquely accessible to the amateur crowd. You can go far with just alittle understanding of basic circuits and signals fundamentals. And with that tiny bit of education, you can have alot of fun. You just need to grasp ohms law, filter time constants and basic AC signal theory and that's about it. Most people had some exposure to these basic ideas in college or in military tech training, so they can jump into the fun with few hurdles.
Skilled engineering? Come over to the RF regime, or start taking signals off things like photomultipliers or other photoelectronic devices. Requires much more substantial investment of time to edumicate yourself to be able to participate successfully. Best left to receive pay for that kind of toil.
The worst DIYer is the one who just thinks he knows it all.
I have been doing it about 40 years and definitely dont know it all.
A lot of my designs are just stuff I have partly ripped from elsewhere.
Learning now and will be until I finally get to my box.
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In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons why no circuit diagrams resp. schematics are issued from such companies. Even if the company claim not to publish the circuit diagrams just to avoid finding later their approaches in Chinese brands.
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They can be, but the engineer almost always works to a spec, budget and deadline.
A real engineer will also only just use those components needed and spec'ed to do the job. Not indulge into endless ******* contests. I guess that is also why a lot of those companies don't give out schematics. They are probably very boring and plain.
The front ends of some medical equipment that needs to measure 64 channels of current with a full scale of 1.2nA at 20kHz and 16-bit look very pedestrian to some DIY stuff here. But they do their job of saving lives every day.
I think you have to define, for yourself, competing. I have built my last few pieces of gear from existing schematics with a lot of help from this forum and others. The sense of building a piece of equipment and having it sound "good" as well as being something you are proud to display cannot be ignored. Finding the right schematic, asking for opinions, sourcing parts and drilling your chassis are the beginning of an adventure. Building the thing versus buying a commercial piece is like the difference between seeing pictures of a landscape and actually traveling there. Just my non-expert opinion.
Looking at some of the DIY preamps on Ebay,
https://www.ebay.com/b/Tube-Preamp-Kit/14970/bn_7023305286?_pgn=2
one commonality with these DIY design is that they don't seem to have enough caps to properly regulate the power supplies. Some of the DIY on these pages are also guilty of the same thing.
Also the volume control probably is not good enough, but probably easy to replace.
But I found this phono pre that has some decent engineering.
German D.Klimo LAR Gold Plus Tube MM/MC Phono Stage Pre-Amplifier Board DIY Kit | eBay
https://www.ebay.com/b/Tube-Preamp-Kit/14970/bn_7023305286?_pgn=2
one commonality with these DIY design is that they don't seem to have enough caps to properly regulate the power supplies. Some of the DIY on these pages are also guilty of the same thing.
Also the volume control probably is not good enough, but probably easy to replace.
But I found this phono pre that has some decent engineering.
German D.Klimo LAR Gold Plus Tube MM/MC Phono Stage Pre-Amplifier Board DIY Kit | eBay
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Oh boy, that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast!
When I said skilled DIYer I meant actually skilled in electronics. Know a few of them, often also engeineers in other branch of electronics. Never meant to disrespect anybody.
True about the deadlines and budget concerns.
Tried RF in college, not my cup of tea.
Never meant, that I know everything. On the contrary: I learn everyday and enjoy every second of that!
When I said skilled DIYer I meant actually skilled in electronics. Know a few of them, often also engeineers in other branch of electronics. Never meant to disrespect anybody.
True about the deadlines and budget concerns.
Tried RF in college, not my cup of tea.
Never meant, that I know everything. On the contrary: I learn everyday and enjoy every second of that!
I agree. Good sound is more than just a fancy cascode input stage ... It takes a lot of fine tuning and attentions to detail such as power supplies, grounding, component selection and listening.
You can do it all with instrumentation. Listening to it is the sanity check. That's assuming your instrumentation is up to the task and you know how to interpret the readings.
Someone using an RTX 6001, UPD, Audio Precision or Keysight U8903B is up to this task. Some of us were very lucky to have bought an RTX 6001 when they became available. Coupled with M.I. (Multi Instrument software by Virtins) it becomes an extremely powerful package.
-Chris
Someone using an RTX 6001, UPD, Audio Precision or Keysight U8903B is up to this task. Some of us were very lucky to have bought an RTX 6001 when they became available. Coupled with M.I. (Multi Instrument software by Virtins) it becomes an extremely powerful package.
-Chris
Assuming you can correctly use it as well. A single wrongly connected ground clip can send you on a search to ghosts.
Really? Do you know how to do it? If you have that kind of expertise, it's awesome.
In particular, can you make a preamp that measures better than the Topping Pre90?
Topping Pre90 Review (preamplifier) | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum
If so, I'd like to know your special recipe.
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I would think that most of the best electronic engineering graduates in the world do not go for a career in designing commercial audio equipment. Anyone with a physics, chemistry, maths or engineering degree should easily be able to learn audio electronics. DIY is not is not constrained by market economics.
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